Treblinka

This and the following posts are not in any specific order, but according to how they grabbed me at the time. On our trip eastwards towards Bielorus we took a sharp detour from the planned route to the forsts surrounding Treblinka. It may have been prompted by there being four Israelis in the tour party and the knowledge that Treblinka saw the extermination of Warsaw's large Jewish population after 1941. Whatever the reason, it was a brooding place of unspeakable evil nestled in quiet woodland a long way from anywhere. Despite the scenery being illuminated by brialliant sunshine and considerable warmth, one's thoughts were on the ordinary people who perished there.

Unlike Auschwitz, where a lot of the buildings still stand, Treblinka has only the foundations of the buildings once covering the site and a lot of symbolism to remind us of the victims. The attached pictures give only a partial feel of the atmosphere of the place. Get there if you can.

AS

Visit to Poland

I have just returned from 9 days in Warsaw and surrounds, so you can expect a flurry of postings in the next few days. The trip was a great success, with the conference being well organised by the Polish Academy of Sciences. There was a four day field trip across the northeast of the country close to the borders with the Kaliningrad Enclave (Russia), Lithuania, Bielorus (white Russia), and the Ukraine. We actually sailed up to the Bielorus border in our bus and discovered that it was a really fraught crossing with armed guards rather than customs officers. Still, the native Poles were friendly, though some of the sites as we shall see were not.

National Trust Properties

I was only in Plymouth for two and a half days, but managed to squeeze in three widely spaced and lovely National Trust properties: the world heritage listed mining sites at Camborne in Cornwall, Trelissick Gardens alongside the head of the Fal estuary (on which Falmouth stands), and La Ronde just out of Exeter on the Exe estuary. I attach three pictures, one from each property, an injustice to complex variegated destinations.

During the 18th century, Cornwall was a technological powerhouse (pun intended) where advances in energy technology fuelled the early industrial revolution. We saw, for example steam driven winding gear for raising men and ores from great depth, and steam driven pumps to extract water from very deep (500 m) holes in the ground. Cornwall is littered with sites of industrial archaeology, especially around Camborne and nearby Redruth, and some have been restored to something like working order. The conditions faced by the miners were atrocious by today's standards, even with the availability of steam power refined by people like Richard Trevithick.

A million miles away in refinement are the gardens at Trelissick - the sort of thing the POMS do very well. The gardens surround an impressive mansion closed to the public, but are themselves wonderful to stroll through in peace and tranquillity. Interestingly, the Fal river was hiding a whole of large vessels redundant in recessionary times - vehicle transports and that kind of thing.

Finally, La Ronde was built by two women in the 18th century after they returned from a very long Grand Tour of Europe's greatest cities. The certainly had imagination, because the building is Octagonal! It's also very quirky inside with libraries and storage for all their momentos hidden away in strange hiding places, and often peculiar decorations - many made of sea-shells.

AS

Red Arrows

Last Thursday was a day to remember. I landed at Heathrow (London) after the usual marathon journey from Armidale at something like 6.30 am and soon found my way on to a train to Paddington Station where I caught the 9.05 am to Plymouth. Trying to keep awake for the 3 hour + trip, I eventually alighted on platform in Plymouth to be met by my brother, Brian, who kindly took time off work to be there. After a quick dash to his home, he and I were joined by Daphne, Joanna and Hollie on a mad dash back into town to see the performance of a life-time!

It so happened I'd arrived on a special day to raise funds for the UK's war casualties and all sorts of military performances were in train. The hilight was something I'd always wanted to see: an aerobatic performance by the Red Arrows, one of the world's leading groups in that genre. They didn't disappoint, and for 20-30 minutes the sky reverberated to the roar of jets laying smoke trails and engaging in precision flying of the most spectacular kind.

These self-explanatory photos show them in action. If you ever get the chance to watch something similar I advise you to sieze the opportunity. The occasion was made more special by the fact that we were standing on Plymouth Hoe looking out to sea at roughly the spot where Sir Francis Drake was reputedly playing bowls when someone spotted the Spanish Armada back in the days of Elizabeth I. It was worth the trip just to see them in action!

AS

Echo Stress Test

Eight months ago, my Newcastle (John Hunter Hospital) specialist ordered a stress test to find out how my health is travelling. I had it yesterday over about 90 minutes, during which time I was quizzed about lifestyle, exercise routine, weighed, and had a whole lot of electrodes strapped on me. I was then ordered on to a bicycle and watched my heart-beat as I pedalled faster and faster. The team of one doctor and his assistant also took before and after resting measurements.

After all that, Dr Gary Baker broke the good news. It appears that my physical condition is roughly that of someone aged 44, not 64. So, it looks like most of you will have to put up with me for a bit longer than I was expecting. Those results will be passed on to Dr James Leitch (appropriate name for a doctor, eh!) at John Hunter, and Dr Ron Grant, my Armidale GP. When you get news like that, it's worth the A$750 (375 GBP) cost, although I'll get 85% of that back on medical insurance.

Oh well, I'll get back to writing those three journal articles due by next Monday, having spent the morning researching a fourth!! Silly me. I might croak of a brain aneurysm trying to conceptualise 43 behavioural traits in 4 dimensional space, not to mention tossing 60+ variables into the air modelling the global economy. And then I'm trying to explain how those processes relate to quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's uncertainty and Schrodinger's cat. In case you think I'm already falling off my perch, try looking up Shrodinger's cat on Google. The poor animal was remarkably alive and dead at the same time. By the way, my psychological incursion manages to conflate letting the mind wander, unfocusing the brain, playing a musical instrument, horsing around and living in a blue environment - plenty of that around here. If you'd like, I'll explain how these things come together and relate to the philosophy of Friedrich Neitzsche. It occurs to me that I might be stark raving mad, so I'll log off and go and commune with my psychologist colleagues - we're in the same School!

AS

Birds

Years ago Emily presented us with a bird feeder, which we keep topped up with seed. So we have a constant parade of interesting birds through our garden as this picture shows. On this occasion, if I identify them correctly, we have a pair of Crimson Rosellas on the left and a King Parrot on the right. They pair for life and there was a fourth bird on the ground which is, I presume, the partner of the one you can see. They're on the ground because (a) our remaining cat, Honey, sees no mileage in the eating them and was probably asleep somewhere; and (b) the birds have poor table manners and tend to toss out seed randomly from the feeder above.

AS

Summer in Winter

Global warming appears to have reached us here in Armidale. It's still winter according to the calendar, and August corresponds with February in the northern hemisphere. So you'd expect snow on the ground and chilly day-time temperatures?

Well, no. The forecast temperature here today is 26C, which is the average summer maximum and the overnight temperature has been around 10C, again normal for summer. Nor is this a one-off event. Yesterday was a mere 25C and the previous 2-3 days were 20C or above.

So plants are going berserk and the magpie nesting season must be close at hand with its swopping fiends trying to knock me off my bike. I thought I might be spared that a few more weeks, but alas no.

AS

Opera! Opera!

Dot and I have just returned from an afternoon at the opera ... in Armidale of all places! It's amazing how a town of 25,000 people can muster a 60 piece orchestra, a choir of 90, and 4 of six soloists, not to mention >400 people paying members of the audience. And this was the second time through.

Have a look at the program, and you'll see that it was ambitious even though the pieces are popular and well-known. I, for one, have them all on disc. Despite the ambition, the music was very well done: the tempi were authentic, the musicians played ensemble with considerable skill and, to put it mildly, the audience were reluctant to let them leave the hall! As usual a couple of my bridge oponents were on stage, not to mention one of my doctors in the role of conductor - and was he good.

Here's what they played, which contained quite a bit of Bel Canto music:
Mozart: Overture to Marriage of Figaro AND Soave il Vento (Cosi fan Tutte)
Bizet: Habanera AND Toreador Song (Carmen) AND Au Fond du Temple (Pearl Fishers)
Massanet: Meditation (Thais)
Puccini: Un Bel Di AND Humming Chorus (Madam Butterfly) AND Nessun Dorma (Turandot)
Mascagni: Intermezzo AND Easter Hymn (Cavallaria Rusticana)
Donizetti: Chorus of the Wedding Guests and Chi mi frenain tal momento (Lucia di Lammermoor)
Verdi: Va Pensiero (Nabucco), Brindisi (La Traviata), Celeste Aida AND Triumphal Scene (Aida)

I thought the last item could have done with a couple of elephants and a pyramid or two, but I suppose they are in short supply locally.

Judging by the comment at the end, there will be another performance next year including Wagner, Strauss, and Janacek. I'm looking forward to seeing the final act of Gotterdamerung (excuse me the lack of umlauts) on stage where poor Brunhilde jumps on her horse Grane, they leap on to Siegried's burning funeral pyre, Valhalla burns to the ground and Rhine floods to clear the stage. I only hope they've got the stage technicians in Armidale to bring it off.

I'm sorry I can post no pictures; perhaps next year.

AS

Max's Diet

We had an enjoyable few days with family in Canberra, but what amazed us most was Max's diet. These pages already record how a selected a Sushi bar for his 5th birthday party. Well, we had three more exotic meals which we wolfed down on consecutive evenings and his tastes range further and further. On Friday it was Vietnamese, Saturday - Turkish, and on Sunday a Moroccan banquet. The first two were produced by local restaurants, but the last was all down to Emily and Rebecca who bought the right ingredients and then prepared a faultless ethnic meal in Emily's new Tajine. For those not acquainted with a Tajine it's an unusually shaped earthen cooking vessel with a high cover to catch evaporating steam and recycle it.

Congratulations to the chefs and Max for eating such a variety of food. Note that there's nothing European here, and that seems to be the trend here. I haven't yet seen a Burmese restaurant, but one cannot be far away!

We finished off the meal with sparklers for Max's enjoyment, if not Emily who burned herself in the process.

AS

Aboriginal Art

Just before we left Cowra in the Central West of NSW, where we had spent the night, we visited an unusual display of Aboriginal art painted on, of all things, the concrete pylons of a road bridge across the Macquarie River.

If the location was bizarre, the paintings themselves seemed inspired as the photos show

AS